SHOSYS ACADEMY 3: Basic Artistic Terminology In Music
Kelvin Sholar
1 Introduction To The Blog Series
This series of lessons and tests incorporates an easy music appreciation curriculum for adult beginners who are remote learning, or are self-taught. Lessons are posted on Mondays while Tests are posted on Saturdays. For more in depth and private guidance, I offer personal instruction by Zoom (Personal Meeting ID 8522954569) – for 1 dollar a minute. Time schedules range from a minimum of 30 minutes to a maximum of 60 minutes. Email me at [email protected] to set up personal instruction. I accept payments and cash gifts by Cash App ($KelvinSholar), Zelle ([email protected]) or Paypal (paypal.me/kelvinsholar).
2 Revisiting The Tree Of Knowledge
In Lesson 2, we learned about the basic scientific terminology for the properties of sound. In this blog, we will learn about the basic artistic terminology for musical elements. This knowledge resides in the Specifics branch (1.10) of the Tree of Knowledge (1.00), at the first leaf from the left (1.11) – Terminology. In “Taxonomy Of Educational Objectives”, Benjamin Bloom describes Knowledge of Terminology as: “Knowledge of the referents for specific verbal and non- verbal symbols” (Bloom 65).
2.1 Knowledge Of Artistic Terminology
The main difference between scientific and artistic terminologies lie in the fact that scientific terms concern sound and noise as a physical and psychical phenomenon; while artistic terms concern sound in the context of the human art-form of music.
For years, many Western music teachers have commonly divided the artistic elements of music into three classes: Harmony, Rhythm and Melody. Roger Kamien, in “Music: An Appreciation“, defines harmony as, “the way chords are constructed and how they follow each other” (Kamien 40). Kamien defines rhythm as, “the ordered durations of sounds and silences” (Kamien 30). Finally, Kamien defines melody as “a series of single tones that add up to a recognizable whole” (Kamien 36).
Tones are the elements of harmony. When we listen to the children’s song “Mary Had A Little Lamb“, (CLICK The Mp3 player below), we can follow the rise and fall of pitches and count exactly four tones – which are labeled E, D, C and G in the order that they appear.
Beats are the elements of rhythm. When we listen to “Mary Had A Little Lamb”, and we follow the staff notation above with our eyes, we will notice that there are four beats per bar, and there are eight bars in total, so that there are thirty-two beats (eight times four) in the song. We will notice that not every beat has a tone. When a silence occurs in staff notation we have a rest sign; thus, there are four rest signs in “Mary Had A Little Lamb”; and they occur at the end of measures two, three, four and eight.
Notes are the written elements of melody. They describe how tones change with respect to time in staff notation. When we listen to “Mary Had A Little Lamb”, and we follow the staff notation above with our eyes, we will notice that each tone is designated by a note on a line or space of the staff. Where there are no notes, there are rest signs; thus, there are twenty eight notes and four rests in the given staff notation of “Mary Had A Little Lamb”.
Tones, beats and notes are simple elements of music. Intervals, time-values, chords, modes and scales are more complex elements of music because they can be reduced to individual tones beats and notes. An interval is given distance between tones, while time-values are given distances between beats. Chords are combinations of two or more tones.
A scale is a seven-tone sequence, while (church) modes are specific western seven-tone sequences – each with a different pattern of ordered intervals or steps. When we travel from one tone to the next tone higher or lower, the distance traveled is called a half-step. When we travel from one tone to another tone two tones higher or lower, then the distance traveled is called a whole-step. In this way, one can describe scales and modes as patterns of half or whole steps.
3 Bibliography
Bloom, B. S.; Engelhart, M. D.; Furst, E. J.; Hill, W. H.; Krathwohl, D. R. Taxonomy Of Educational Objectives: The Classification Of Educational Goals. Handbook I: Cognitive Domain. New York: David McKay Company, 1956
Kamien, Roger. Music: An Appreciation. New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2018